


but i still know your birthday

by fir8008



Series: give the bruises out like gifts [1]
Category: Produce 101 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dance, Alternate Universe - High School, First Love, Gay Epiphany, M/M, Prequel, rated for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 13:32:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12300162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fir8008/pseuds/fir8008
Summary: They only talk up to January, but in the end, Insoo only spends one month in dance club with Woncheol, but in that month he learns more about himself than he expected to(a "come on skinny love" prequel)





	but i still know your birthday

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hello! I am back, after three and a half weeks of nothing. I've been working on some longer wips but I pushed myself to finish this little one so I could publish something since I feel quite unproductive when I don't. 
> 
> I talked myself into writing an Insoo/Woncheol prequel to "come on skinny love" and its related fics, since Woncheol began to pop up in the series and I thought it would be worth it to write this. Perhaps since it's a prequel, the writing style is quite like my much older pieces, not very much dialogue and airs more on the side of angsty. As a standalone fic, this is probably quite sad, but in conjunction with the other fics in the series, I would say that they both have happier endings than this. 
> 
> Anyhow, I hope you enjoy reading this! 
> 
> Title comes from Halsey's "Sorry"

Insoo’s just passing by the dance studio when he sees him for the first time.

Insoo is skipping class because he hates math and a little bit of rebellion only seems fair for being exiled to this backwater with his parents instead of being allowed to live on his own in a bigger city. Just because his dad has to work here doesn’t mean he should be condemned to live here too. Insoo ardently hates everyone and everything and is very, very involved in his own teenage angst. 

But when he looks through the dance studio window, Insoo sees a boy who makes him stop dead in his tracks. He’s tall and slim and is moving with such controlled grace than Insoo can’t help but be awed. Insoo knows basically nothing about dance, only that he sure can’t do that. And before he can stop himself, Insoo has pushed open the door. 

“Teach me how to do that.” 

The boy stops to look at him, a surprised look on his face. Insoo thinks he’s vaguely familiar, maybe they have a class together. 

“I asked you to join the dance club at lunch,” the boy says, a wry smile on his face. “I recall you told me to get fucked.” 

Insoo can feel heat creeping up the back of his neck. “Did I?” He can’t remember, honestly. He’s told a lot of people to get fucked today. 

“I’m guessing you’ve had a change of heart then,” the boy continues diplomatically. 

“What? No, I don’t want to join any club just,” Insoo points at him. “Just teach me that thing you were doing.” 

“Why should I teach you things that will be taught during club activities?” 

“You… aren’t you a first year?” 

“Yes,” the boy smiles as he walks over to Insoo. “I’m Jung Woncheol. I’m the head of the junior dance club. The seniors found out I had more dance experience than any of them so they told me I should have a junior club for first time dancers.”

“I’m… I’m Lee Insoo.” 

“It’s nice to meet you, Insoo.” Woncheol smiles at him. “Now, do you want to join dance club?” 

 

Insoo will say he joins dance club on a whim, but he really does it because he’s a bit starstruck by Woncheol. He also really does want to learn whatever he watched Woncheol doing. Woncheol is nice enough for Insoo to tolerate and even be nice to through his haze of rebellion and angst. Woncheol is even nice enough for Insoo to want to be around, though he’d never admit that. 

The other people in the dance club are another story, and Insoo maintains his frostiness and snippiness when interacting with them. Woncheol tells him many people have already complained about his attitude and Insoo pointedly tells Woncheol to relay his simple message of “get fucked” to them. Woncheol always has the audacity to laugh in his face when he says it, and Insoo grumbles about Woncheol looking like an idiot when he laughs, which only makes Woncheol laugh at him more. 

“Why do you always pretend to be so tough?” Woncheol challenges him one day. “I can see right through you. You’re obviously a big softie.” 

Insoo balks at the accusation. “I am not soft!” 

“You are too,” Woncheol is smiling. “I think you’re just putting on an act.” 

Insoo is not in the mood to get psychoanalyzed by someone his age. “Why do you care?” 

“Maybe because you keep intimidating the other club members,” Woncheol says smoothly. “And as club president I need to talk to you about your attitude.” 

“Maybe I’ll just quit your club,” Insoo says loftily. 

“Maybe I’ll let you,” Woncheol replies.

Insoo’s face twists. That’s not the response he wanted. 

“Anyway,” Woncheol continues. “You’re the one who demanded I let you join so you could learn dance after telling me to get fucked when I asked the first time.” 

Insoo does not appreciate the way Woncheol is looking at him. It isn’t a smug expression, it’s something else that Insoo can’t quite place, but it’s a little too much like Woncheol knows everything and Insoo hates that. 

“Then I quit,” Insoo says. 

Woncheol shrugs, unflapped. It’s an infuriating gesture. “I guess you quit.” 

 

Insoo doesn’t quit for long, because stupid as it seems, he finds himself missing having something to do when classes are over. Dance club kept him from living as a truant, because he had a couple irate notes sent home and his mother had cried. Insoo had felt a little bad because his mother didn’t ask to be here either so as far as he was concerned, they were in the same boat, but his mother was holding the oars and not using them. 

Insoo hates swallowing his pride, but he does it anyway, even if he hates the wry smile on Woncheol’s face more. 

“Really? You want to come back again?” 

“Yes,” Insoo mumbles. “I’ve worked on my attitude.” 

“I suppose I can accept that,” Woncheol says with a serene smile. “You should come to the dance studio during your free period. You missed a bit of choreography.”

Insoo goes, unsure of what to expect. It’s just him, Woncheol, and the straining scratchy music from the old sound system in the dance studio. 

“You have to try to stay balanced here,” Woncheol says, turning with ease, “or else you’ll fall over. So bend your knee a bit when you turn.” 

Insoo tries, and feels himself tilting over. Woncheol puts a hand out to steady him and Insoo feels like he’s been hit by lightning, a burning bolt of electricity striking the small of his back and pieces Insoo didn’t even know were loose fall into place. 

Insoo is gay and he kinda has a crush on Woncheol. 

A lot of things start to make sense when, despite Woncheol’s attempt to keep him steady, Insoo goes crashing down onto the dance studio floor. Insoo noticed when his friends from back home started to talk about girls they thought were cute in middle school. Insoo never had much of an opinion. Even now, Insoo had found himself much more drawn to the strong line of Woncheol’s nose or the pleasing way he smiled when he wasn’t pushing Insoo’s buttons. In fact, Insoo had spent an awful lot of time thinking about Woncheol since they had first met. 

Woncheol extends his hand to help Insoo up and Insoo just looks up at him with wide eyes. He takes Woncheol’s hand, another surge of electric tingling through his body, and Woncheol just smiles at him and tells him to try the turn again. 

 

It’s a bit of an unspoken thing at first. 

Insoo is dazed by his own feelings, the realization that whatever his middle school friends felt about girls he was feeling about a boy. It’s a bit startling but it still seems right. Even without saying it, Woncheol just seems to understand it and sometimes Woncheol holds his hand even if it makes Insoo’s heart thunder in the base of his throat. It’s probably for the best Woncheol just understands him because Insoo isn’t even sure he could speak.

Eventually, they do talk about it, because they know they need to; they know these wordless gestures can’t be the only thing they share. 

Woncheol has known for much longer than Insoo that he’s gay, but Insoo is the first person he’s ever told. Insoo tells him he just found out because of his heightened feelings for Woncheol. Woncheol laughs, it’s a different laugh, much more tender, much more lilting. 

“That’s very flattering,” he says. 

“It’s not flattery,” Insoo protests. “It’s true.”

Insoo tells him he walked past the dance studio and he fell for the boy he saw through the window. 

 

They don’t tell anyone, not out of fear, but just because it’s theirs and they want it to just be theirs. Insoo thinks they might even be doing a bad job of acting unaffected around each other, because Woncheol checks on Insoo in dance club a lot, probably checks up on him the most, though to be fair Insoo is still having trouble with those damn turns and spends a lot of time eating the floor. Moreover, Woncheol has made Insoo much more mellow, and most people have noticed Insoo’s drastic change in demeanor. 

That doesn’t mean Insoo has completely given up telling people to get fucked, it just means he reserves it for special occassions. 

His mother notices that he’s calmer and comments about it. Insoo just says he’s made friends at school. She sighs with relief. 

 

There are some boundaries they don’t cross. They don’t talk about the future. It’s strange, because they’re the same age, so they could have the rest of high school and that feels like an eternity. They could have every day after school in this dance studio. Even if they ended up in different homerooms every year, they could have every lunch and every moment passing in the hallway. They could have years. 

They only talk up to January. Their birthdays are both in January. Maybe they’ll spend it together, they muse, even if it’s a school day. Maybe they’ll skip school. Maybe they’ll take a trip into Seoul and get hopelessly lost in the swirling lights of a city on a cold day in winter. Maybe they’ll miss the last train back to the countryside and be stuck there. 

But January is far away and until then Insoo has more to think about, like his grades and dance club and the quiet sounds of his parents arguing behind closed doors. His mom is suffering, he thinks, she dislikes being here as much as Insoo did before he met Woncheol. But if Insoo wants to stay now, what will his mom do? Insoo tries to not think about it. 

Instead, he thinks about January and how winter in the countryside might be beautiful with the snow painting all the landscapes, but then walking up a winding path to school might be treacherous. He wishes he and Woncheol didn’t live on opposite sides of town. Maybe they could've walked together, holding hands to keep each other from slipping on patches of ice. 

 

Woncheol asks him again one day, “why do you put up that strong front?” 

Insoo answers this time. “I was really angry before. I just wanted to be angry, I guess. But I’m not as angry anymore.” 

“Oh? Do I have something to do with not being angry anymore?” Woncheol is smiling at him so easily; Insoo can smile back. 

“Hmm? Oh, maybe.” 

Woncheol laughs at his coyness. 

The moment seems to feel right, so they lean in to kiss each other, but get shy halfway and just bump noses before turning away with burning faces. It’s enough to just be this close, there’s time for a kiss in the future. Maybe January. Maybe. 

 

In the end, they don’t get January. They only get a month when Insoo is served with news he would’ve rejoiced at last month. His dad got a job transfer back in the city. So they were moving. 

Insoo doesn’t want to. He asks to stay. It doesn’t make sense, to transfer into a school only to transfer out. Let him finish the semester, but his dad says no. When he says he’s already submitted transfer paperwork to Insoo’s school, Insoo starts to have a suspicion. He thinks his dad maybe knows and sees more than Insoo will give him credit for. So maybe he knows about Woncheol and the kiss and knows about everything. And doesn’t approve. 

So maybe that’s why Insoo doesn’t get to say goodbye. 

 

They’re unpacking again. 

Insoo’s mom asks him if he can unpack dishes and he does so begrudgingly. He tries to not be angry that his mother is so happy. She was miserable there, he knows, but he wasn’t. He had spent the better part of two weeks expressing his displeasure. He smashed his phone. He trashed his bedroom. He resisted packing as long as he could. It had all been futile. 

So he unpacks dishes until he picks up a mug and a thought crosses his mind, an intrusive thought. He doesn’t have to put up with this. He can raise hell if he wants. The mug is a deadly weight in his hand as he slowly turns, cocks his arm, and lobs it at the wall. 

It shatters and Insoo jumps at the noise. 

“Insoo!” His mom is standing in the doorway to the kitchen, staring in shock. Insoo has clearly not dropped that mug. His eyes meet hers. Her eyes are wide. Insoo picks up a plate he previously unwrapped, considers it, before throwing it on the floor, watches it break, sees how his mother flinches at the impact and the noise. 

It feels good, this kind of hell raising. 

 

It snows on January 12th. 

Insoo is in Seoul, with new friends, when he slips on a patch of ice. The arm that reaches to steady him isn’t Woncheol’s, and that’s when Insoo realizes that Woncheol hasn’t really entered his thoughts in the months he’s been away. 

It’s Woncheol’s birthday. Insoo reaches into his pocket, maybe he’ll text Woncheol, apologize for leaving with no warning and… Insoo freezes. He doesn’t have Woncheol’s number. When he smashed his phone in a temper tantrum, it got replaced without transferring any of his contacts. Maybe in his anger, it hadn’t seemed worth it because he was never going to see those people from that little countryside town ever again. 

“Are you okay?” 

Insoo blinks and nods. If he hasn’t spared Woncheol a thought up until this moment, he can go on not thinking of him again. Maybe that’s why he announces after a few more steps that he wants to get his ears pierced. Maybe when he’s wincing at the sting from the getting the piercing he hopes he’ll change enough to forget, because it can’t mean anything. He can’t go backwards. 

He can let one month in a countryside high school’s dance club roll off of him and act like it meant nothing. 

So Insoo smacks away curious hands that want to touch his smarting ears and glares at his parents when they reprimand him for getting them and he just keeps barrelling forward. 

One month is easy enough to forget.

**Author's Note:**

> you can follow me on twitter @jy_kim8008 where i complain about fic writing and life 
> 
> (and i hope to see everyone participating in the @101_lovesongs fic fest! I will be too!)


End file.
